September 4, 2008

One little remarked point are the similarities in the roles of Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton in the rise to power of their husbands: they were both skilled operatives instrumental in building their husbands' political machines. Obama, for example, placed Michelle in the 1990s in charge of a headhunter's group for social charities in Chicago, allowing her seed hundreds of Barack Obama loyalists throughout Chicago NGOs. Interestingly, Barack has seldom over-praised his wife's contributions the way Bill Clinton did so slavishly. Barack likes to play up Michelle as wife-and mother rather than as political cadre.

Obama's never shown much respect for feminism. His appreciation of his grandmother, a pioneering woman banking executive in Hawaii is rather faint.

And both are from the Chicago area! Going further with the analogies, how likely is it that Barack has been entirely faithful to his wife throughout his rise? A man of his background who suddenly finds himself world famous, with a media that seems eager to cover for him whatever it is that might need to be covered - I say it's not terribly likely.

If it is suddenly, accidentally revealed before the election that he's had a white mistress or two, how would black female voters react? I say they'll grit their teeth and vote for him anyway.

Obama's never shown much respect for feminism. I've been trying to make white women realize that they're at the bottom of the Affirmative Action pecking order but never managed to move them even an inch.

I began reading several feminist political blogs around the time that Obama began to emerge as the likely winner over Hillary and noticed that many of them were pointing out that Obama was worse than McCain when it came to acting like a male chauvinist. But, of course, none of them actually planned to vote for McCain.

Do you really believe that Obama has any serious disagreements with feminists? His issues with his grandmother seem more about race than hostility for uppity career women.

Playing up Michelle's wife and mother role is a canny move meant to soften her image with the public. Considering how scary she comes off and how uncomfortable a lot of people are with her, he'd have to be crazy to present her as a co-president like Clinton did with Hillary.

Speaking of - Bill Clinton loved talking feminism but acted like a pig towards women in his personal life. Obama, as far as I know, is pretty clean on that score and his marriage with Michelle at least looks genuine, unlike the grim, bizarre Clinton partnership.

Feminism and gay liberation have never loomed large in the black nationalist mindset. Tom Wolfe captured it perfectly in "A Man in Full" when he described a conversation between two black power brokers in Atlanta who basically said, how dare those white boys who want to kiss each other compare their struggle to ours? (They may have had a point.) In any case, there's only one cause which resonates with any urgency with that crowd.

I remember during the OJ trial, when my wife, after finding out that the composition of the jury consisted largely of black women, said, "They'll never let him get away with it. They're women!" I tried to correct her, but she wouldn't listen. At least I was able to make a few bucks off some of the guys at work betting that he would be acquitted.

the grandmother thing, that could be down to the rather simple reason that obama does not like white people, so why would he praise one?

he only references his white family when politically convenient. it was convenient to talk about his white ancestors fighting the evil, racist nazis. but he doesn't like his white ancestors at all, and would be very happy if he could not be related to them.

he'd much rather have two kenyan parents who never served in any military, never fought any classic enemy of the US, and who were outright and real racists themselves.

If you or your readers want to use your comparative advantage to exploit Palin-mania you could write about teen-pregnancies.

Hard one: Do Republicans have more or less pregnancies than? Maybe there is county level data on this, or GSS similar.

Easier: They keep saying the US has the highest teen birth rate. True, for for non-Hispanic whites the figures (28 per 1000 in 2002 for example) are much closer to other developed countries, such as NZ, UK. Some of the diff will go away if you control for the fact that the US has higher birth rates in GENERAL.

How big of a problem are teen-births anyway among married couples with decent norms and social network, like the Palins? Seems to me the media is equating teen birth rates among welfare moms with the Palins. Should not be impossible hard to fins studies that look at outcomes for different groups.

I keep thinking of the similarity between the Obama and Clinton marriages: both two-lawyer couples in which both spouses graduated from prestige law schools, the sort of schools that specialize, for some students, in legal theory or preparation for political careers.

By coincidence, I just returned from 2 1/2 weeks in Paris. One small difference between Paris and my hometown in DC: In Paris, all the streets of a major city, with 2million very diverse people, felt safe around the clock, yet you almost never saw a policeman in Paris.

Apparently French judges, not guided by a Supreme Court and fascinating Constitutional theories, do something when police arrest a miscreant that gets the miscreant's attention.

There is a difference between liking women (Clinton clearly does and is comfortable with them) and feminism (which is an ideology of unlimited yuppie female choice).

Clinton liked his mother, his wife, his many mistresses, his female advisors. Whatever his faults he knew who and what he was.

Obama? Not so much. He as noted did not like his Grandmother or mother because the latter abandoned him and the former was white. Moreover he has the typical hyper-macho, compensating Black guy raised by a single mother's disdain for women.

You can see this attitude echoed in the Rap Video misogyny, and also btw in the White British underclass which is also plagued by single motherhood and female choice for the thuggiest thug. Read Dalrymple's "Life at the Bottom." The Hispanic underclass is also plagued by this as well, particularly in the third generation (immigrants often have intact nuclear families that fall apart by that generation).

Henry -- I have a ex-Parisian neighbor. That's true only for the tourist areas, and only when peace is bought. Paris is plagued by the PC/Multiculti fanatics, who have inflicted huge crime rates in the Metro and have made arrests of "youths" of African/North African background essentially forbidden.

Crime rates in France, and the UK, vs. the US? It's far safer in NYC than either Paris or London. Denizens of the latter visiting the former are shocked at the public safety, lack of organized gangs periodically marauding into "safe" zones, etc. You won't see for example parking meters robbed in broad daylight in front of the police who find it un-PC to do anything.

Let me add, Clinton was also the product of the single mother, but his particular Southern boomer environment did not have the dominant sexual choice for women so amply displayed as it was just a few years later.

There was a huge cultural change and choice shift among young women abruptly around 1965, in all social strata, for "hard" men. Worse in the Black Community, particularly the urban core, but present among Whites and Hispanics and Asians as well.

...how likely is it that Barack has been entirely faithful to his wife throughout his rise? A man of his background who suddenly finds himself world famous, with a media that seems eager to cover for him whatever it is that might need to be covered - I say it's not terribly likely

Have you seen the traps on Michelle? She's built like a powerlifter. Barry wouldn't dare stray.

The brilliance of France is that they decided to make the suburbs the projects/ghetto/marginalized/crime-ridden areas rather than the cities. In America white flight drove people from urban areas. In Paris, poor people and immigrants were kicked out.

"Don't get me wrong. Hussein Osama is poison and he's going to bring ruin to this country." - m

Well, beyond that, he doesn't have any more experience than the bottom of the Republican ticket. He's much more out of his depth than the young Gov. Palin, since she has shown common sense and an ability to thrive in a variety of work environments. He has shown the ability to organize ... communities ... which are by definition already organized ... to do ... what exactly? Basically to do what depressed urban areas already do - beg for more Federal handouts. What government is he going to beg for handouts from, on behalf of the "depressed urban area" he seems to think the US is?

Without knowing the exact history of Paris, I doubt the immigrants were literary “kicked out”, they were never concentrated in central Paris. What generally happened in Europe was that immigrants moved into cheap and abundant working class neighborhoods around the cities (droving out the working class natives). They didn’t make it to the center to start with, either because of rent control (if you don’t have contacts you can’t get rationed apartments) or simply because it was more expensive.

I think the US is the outlier here, with minorities concentrated in the intrinsically most valuable land in the center. Of course even in America that slowly changing.

In reading Dreams from my Father, I never detected a sense of hostility toward women on Obama's part, more like an indifference toward them. I fully expected the book to wrap up with a heartwarming tale of how he met Michelle and she turned his life around. But it ends rather abruptly. And Obama's relationships with women play only a small part compared to his desire to find approval from the men in his life.

If Philip Roth's anti-feminism is a product of his hyper-heterosexuality, I wonder if Obama's indifference to women might be attributed to some homosexual leanings on his part. I offer that suggestion as a possible insight into Obama's psyche, not as a partisan political slam. After all, McCain's best friend is Lindsey Graham.

Steve,Unrelated, but, Ross Douthat links to a blogger who brings up a subject that is tailor made for you: the subliminal effect of beauty, female beauty, in the democratic process.

I mentioned in another post that I noticed Palin's beauty during her big speech, but didn't find it too distracting due to her powerful oratory. Several times I found myself staring and had to tell myself to snap out of it and I am a woman. Afterwards, I did wonder what it all meant and what its effects are. Now, I'm extremely partisan, but I am curious (or I wouldn't have been a reader of yours for about 5-6 years).

Also, Palin's voice. I overheard H. Clinton giving a victory speech one night during the primary. My husband had fallen asleep on the couch and I found her tone so annoying that after about 5 minutes of trying to ignore it, I could not and had to end my bath early to turn it off. I told him the next day Clinton would not be President.

"many of them were pointing out that Obama was worse than McCain when it came to acting like a male chauvinist."

I was not aware that Obama left his first wife because she started loosing her looks, or called her a 'cunt' in public, but then I did just get on the internet today.

"Considering how scary she comes off..."

It's only my humble opinion, but I feel that men who are scared of Michelle O are the same type of men who jump atop a chair, screaming hysterically when the see a mouse.

"I tried to correct her, but she wouldn't listen"

Of course there were three whites on the jury, and of course a murder conviction case must be decided unanimously, but hey, why let the facts get in the way of a good point!

"Clinton liked his mother, his wife, his many mistresses..."

If he liked his wife, he wouldn't have mistresses.

"the grandmother thing, that could be down to the rather simple reason that obama does not like white people."

I must have missed the passage in the book in which Prince BHO said that he does not like white people. He's had white girlfriends, business associates, political advisors and now a white running mate.

Note to all in the ISteve Universe, projecting racism onto others to normalize your own just doesn't work.

"Moreover he has the typical hyper-macho, compensating Black guy raised by a single mother's disdain for women. "

Yes, and we can tell by the way he dumped his aging wife, and carried on dozens of embarrassing public affairs...oh wait, those were the last two WHITE presidents.

"Let me add, Clinton was also the product of the single mother, but his particular Southern boomer environment did not have the dominant sexual choice for women so amply displayed as it was just a few years later."

What is the effect of Palin's beauty on Matt Drudge?! I know, he's pro-life and that means just about everything to him, but it is 7:08 p.m. and nary a reference to McCain speaking tonight. His front page... oh my! She's blowing a kiss (this had been aimed at McCain's fellow POW who suffered with him) and there are 16 different items related to Palin in the top left corner.

Obama is extremely disciplined, organized and focused. He doesn't strike me as a compulsively promiscuous Bill Clinton type. That's not to say he has never or will never stray, but I think if and when he strays it will never hit the fan like Clinton's bimbo eruptions. Most presidents have mistresses and no one ever hears about them; the only reason Clinton's did is because he would screw any female who was alive and not visibly deformed. I'm sure Obama will choose for his liasons level headed women who know how to keep their mouths shut.

I know that during the primaries it was in the Obama camp's best interest to make Hillary look racist, and in the Clinton camp's to make Obama look sexist. So the lack of convincing examples from both sides indicates there is no real substance to the charges.

Obama might look vulnerable to this line of criticism, what with him defeating Hillary and picking a male veep, and McCain picking a female veep. But I doubt Steve or any core readers really think Obama's deviantly disrespectful to women.

I'd analogize this to two guys trying to pick up a woman at a bar, and both have their wingmen. Steve here is acting as McCain's wingman and c-blocking Obama.

to propagandize effectively, I think you need both a realistic model of the world (Obama seems like a normally respectful guy towards women, neither hero no villian, a little more on the respectful side) and model of how the right propaganda could shape future reality (women upset that Obama deprived Hillary the nomination and who'd like to see a woman as Veep may be susceptible to narratives that Obama is disrespectful towards women, allowing McCain to win the presidency).

You know, I think I like this blog and its comments better when it is a rational look at the news sans political correctness, and less of the "Obama hates white people" and "kick dem damn foreigners out" sort of thing.

Steve, off topic, but you might want to blog on Tim Groseclose. He's put together an 89 page report that shows that UCLA is doing what we all knew it was doing, namely discriminating against Asians and whites in violation of the law.

Also, please always leave the "anonymous" comment option open. Given the danger of being Watsoned, many of us prefer to post our comments from the "I am Spartacus" concealment of a crowd of anonymii. You cannot do this if everyone has to take names, because people get annoyed if you post under someone else's name.

The hit on "community organizers" was awesome and long overdue. The left knows it's just cover for "left wing activist" and "rabble rouser".

In this it serves the same role that terms like "affirmative action" and "social justice" serve -- conceal the actual goals of the left by ever shifting nomenclature. For example, rebranding as "progressive" means that they can disclaim being communists if and when that is convenient to do so.

But back to "community organizer"...left wing blogs are already trying to explain to people what a "community organizer" does (basically, agitate for gummint handouts and get the natives all restless and angry). And thus they have lost. No one needs to explain that a steelworker or an engineer does productive work. No one needs to explain that "lawyer" is an occupation of sorts. But everyone intuits that a job like "community organizer" is bullshit.

I was not aware that Obama left his first wife because she started loosing her looks

Well, he did leave the girl he was going to marry because she was white. Remember that? Frankly I'd rather have a superficial war hero than a racist "community organizer" as President, even if they are both going to open the borders.

You know, I think I like this blog and its comments better when it is a rational look at the news sans political correctness, and less of the "Obama hates white people" and "kick dem damn foreigners out" sort of thing.

Amen to that. The last few threads have been some of the best ever on this blog.

Truth, the simple fact that Clinton grew up in the late 1950's-early 1960's, before the culture shifted, is evidence enough. Compare-contrast Little Rock of 1958 vs. say, Columbia 1980's. Attitudes of women and men towards women, of white southern boys and girls, vs. black NYC boys and girls.

BHO states in Dreams From My Father, how he dumped a white g/f because he could not stand being related to any more white people, and how he viscerally hated a white guy who interviewed him for a job, just based on the guy's race.

He attended Trinity, and defended it and Wright, years after it became a liability to his career, because he hated Whites more than he cared for his ambition.

Anon -- Clinton was done in because someone at Newsweek was ticked his story was killed to protect Clinton, and leaked it to Drudge. Otherwise no one would have known. The Press protected Edwards also, until the National Enquirer caught him in the hotel room. JFK was protected by the Press. Because he was a Liberal Dem. Because the Press are all Liberal Dems.

Given the worship of Obama that the Press has, it's not unreasonable to suggest either a drug habit (how the heck does 72 year old McCain outwork him) or a mistress or both, concealed by the Press. If you believe the TNR story of how the campaign is terrified of the Press digging into Obama's past. [Sex and Drugs are easy to understand, money is hard.]

How the worm turns...Hillary now back in the catbird seat, with Obama coming to her and begging favors from her...

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/05/america/05dems.php

Advisers to Clinton, who has been on vacation this week, said that she stands ready to help the Obama-Biden ticket, but they urged not to overestimate the effect she could have, noting that she had other commitments this fall, like campaigning and raising money for Senate candidates.

Thanks for the correction on what I didn't see as a tourist. But I still had the impression that the French have control of their crime policies, and can tighten up where and when it becomes necessary. I saw a few neighborhoods where at least half of the street population was African, and the commercial streets were busy, not boarded up and deserted as in many commercial streets in the black sections of Washington. I tried to get out beyond the usual tourist quarters, although I did not see the far suburbs.

How the worm turns...Hillary now back in the catbird seat, with Obama coming to her and begging favors from her..."

My take is Hil, who I would have preferred over Obama, is hoping McCain and the babe come in. That would make Obama unsavoury for the next election cycle. Even the DNC knows they cannot run another "Obama the Messiah" media blitz without some of the dunces noticing.

On top Hil owes Obama nothing. He beat her through media bias and collusion, and by playing the primaries, as Steve and others have pointed out. Without all this stealth she would have been the nominee, and I'm not sure McCain/TheBabe would have been enough to prevent her becoming the next prez.

So Hil is going to support him enough so that she does not alienate the DNC structure which she needs for 2012. Then its going to be Hil against TheBabe, almost like a beauty contest for middle aged women. Beauty against brains. We all know how that works out with men.

Whoawhoawhoa. Since when is a woman getting pregnant at optimal fertility a bad thing? The average American female has menarche at 10 years 3 months. Her fertility drops as she ages past her teens, and the chance of birth complications increases as she gets older.

Having your first baby twenty or more years after nature allows you to is bad science as well as bad social policy. If nature intended for 30 year old women to have their first kids it wouldn't have made them with such fat asses and saggy tits.

I shouldn't have to explain this to adults. The young Palin girl is going to be happier and have a more rewarding life than the bitter cat hoarding spinsters and wannabe men that largely comprise today's working age female cohort.

And there is another angle: The girl is, what, 18? That's 70 years of life expectancy ahead of her, in a country with an eleventy trillion dollar federal debt. Think about how much the world has changed since 1938, and how much it will change in the next 70 years. My generation has been told since birth not to expect that there will be government pensions when we retire. I'd bet on that. The state, which provides so generously for today's women, probably won't be there in 70, or 50, or even 25 years, not the way it is today anyway. Women should start thinking loooooooong term about matters like who will look after them when they are vulnerable. Kids may be seen as a liability today, but that is an anomaly that will pass.

You know, I think I like this blog and its comments better when it is a rational look at the news sans political correctness, and less of the "Obama hates white people" and "kick dem damn foreigners out" sort of thing.

There is likely no other blog around that has such extreme differences in comment quality from post to post.

Also, please always leave the "anonymous" comment option open. Given the danger of being Watsoned, many of us prefer to post our comments from the "I am Spartacus" concealment of a crowd of anonymii. You cannot do this if everyone has to take names, because people get annoyed if you post under someone else's name.

Why can't you just go by, say, "anonymous 4"

Something, anything so people can figure out who is making what argument and/or respond to a specific individual.

No politician owes any competitor anything; they do however owe the party that has brought them to prominence a great deal.

"Well, he did leave the girl he was going to marry because she was white."

Oh, so you would have had more respect and liking for a black man who married a white woman?

Unless you are totally indifferent to this issue, you are a racist as well, so you and BHO are birds of a feather.

Oh, and getting an affirmative action post in the military after graduating in the bottom .3% of your class (Admiral father and grandfather) and getting shot down only to sing like a canary does not make one a war hero: He could have refused to eat or hung himself from the ceiling with his shoelaces had he 'really loved America.'

"Compare-contrast Little Rock of 1958 vs. say, Columbia 1980's."

So if Bill Clinton had the right to be racist because of where he has grown up, I would suppose that any black man over say, 50 has the same right in your opinion, damn, Barry misses the boat by 3 years.

"and how he viscerally hated a white guy who interviewed him for a job, just based on the guy's race."

Testing 99, if hating someone one time because of the color of his skin summed up one's worth in life, 90% of the regular posters to this website would be deemed unfit to live, and they don't even rationalize it as well as Barry did.

"Typical white people are racists in Obama's view, remember?"

No, I don't, neither do most intelligent people ad many old women are afraid of black men and many white scientists/government officals believe that AIDS was created as a biological weapon.

Barry, Barry, Barry. How often did anyone, media or blogger, refer to Barrack Hussein Obama as Barry or Barry Obama before the convention? Was it focus-grouped? William Clinton was always referred to by the nickname he used for himself. Seems pretty reasonable that Obama didn't go by 'Barry' in his adult life until very recently.

I counted at least three references to Barrack Obama's nuclear familly as the Huxtables. Never heard them called that before the convention.

Both changes are indicative of a run to center. Maybe a desperate one.

You know, I think I like this blog and its comments better when it is a rational look at the news sans political correctness, and less of the "Obama hates white people" and "kick dem damn foreigners out" sort of thing.

Rev. Wright?...But maybe you weren't in church that day either. And oh yeah, God Damn America! Don't be dishonest and ignorant.

Hard one: Do Republicans have more or less [teen] pregnancies than? Maybe there is county level data on this, or GSS similar.

Pregnancies or births? There's a difference, and that difference is the abortion rate, which is higher in blue states. 8 of the top 10 states, abortion-wise, voted for Kerry in 2004.

How big of a problem are teen-births anyway among married couples with decent norms and social network, like the Palins?

Not as big of a problem as the press likes to make out. My (limited) experience is that the babies tend to do pretty much the same as their parents. You can say, "Gee, look at that kid. His mother had him when she was 16 and he turned out to be white trash!" Sure, but his parents and grandparents were white trash, too.

In contrast, the teen mothers I've known who came from middle- and upper middle-class families all married the fathers and are still married (presumably happily). In every case but one they were all Mormon.

Obama? Not so much. He as noted did not like his Grandmother or mother because the latter abandoned him and the former was white.

What do you see? I see a look I know, and I think most of us know. It's the look of a young kid excited to meet someone he's heard a million great things about. And the kid assumes, naively, that this person is a decent person who actually cares about his son, unaware completely that this guy just sees him as some spawn he dropped off with an ugly white woman during a temproary stay in Hawaii.

If Obama's mother had been honest she would have told him that his father was a no-good worthless sonuvabitch who got when the gettin' was good. But we all know that kind of woman, and we don't like her, and for good reason. If Barry Jr. is told that his father is no good, then what would that do to him?

No, Stanley lied to her son not to protect his father but to protect her son. The irony, though, was that Barry Jr. grew up glorifying the man and the race that abandoned him, while pissing on the race that actually bothered to care for him.

If I was half one race and half another, I think I would grow up wanting to favor the race which stood by me. But that's not how things work in this world. Barry Jr, like a lot of people, grew up to glorify his minority half for some reason. Because they're the underdog? Because it's his dad's race? Because of his name? Because it's the race he most feels in his blood?

Then again, given his close ties to George Soros and a lot of other white money men, maybe Obama really doesn't care about his black half. Maybe he's just another one-worlder in bed with the establishment who is using his race to tie up the Dem vote. Maybe he's just here to suck this country dry and then toss it over his shoulder like an empty beer can, for reasons that have nothing to do with race.

[Immigrant minorities] didn’t make it to the center to start with, either because of rent control (if you don’t have contacts you can’t get rationed apartments) or simply because it was more expensive.

Remember, one of the big things that drove whites out of the cities here was school bussing. Live in a big city and we're gunna make your kids go to school with black kids. People wanting good schools for their kids, but who couldn't afford the privates, packed up and left. There were HUD and Equal Opportunity Housing to make sure (in working class neighborhoods only, of course) that blacks could move into your neighborhood. France didn't have that kind of race craziness.

Most presidents have mistresses and no one ever hears about them

That's an interesting assumption. Believable, but how do you prove it? Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and both President's Bush: where were their mistresses?

You know, I think I like this blog and its comments better when it is a rational look at the news sans political correctness [not a] "kick dem damn foreigners out" sort of thing.

Rationally, we're tired of giving our damn country away, and that's why we want the foreigners out. But then I forgot about the massive cultural and scientific contributions foreigners have made to burger flipping and vacuum cleaning.

Frankly I'd rather have a superficial war hero than a racist "community organizer" as President, even if they are both going to open the borders.

Wrong. Because if a Democrat does it, most Republicans might oppose it as a reason to rally the base, and he could get thrown out in 4 years. If a Republican does it the Dems will say "Don't throw me in that Briar Patch!"

This, Martin, is what is known as a sophist argument. One castigates Obama for saying that his white grandmother was afraid of blacks, whereas if you the person making the argument had heard that his grandmother was taking the bus to Compton, he would say "are you crazy, you're supposed to be afraid of blacks!"

Obama told a stoy about his mother being afraid of a black man, and this is used against him by people who's general argument is that whites should have inherent fear of blacks.

It is a little like what happened on an earlier post, in which a poster tried to use Obama dumping a white girl in favor of a black one against him.

He made the argument as though this is a moralistic failure on the part of Obama. In order for this to be logical, the writer would have to believe that all people and all relationships are equal, he would also have to have no resentment toward a black man who was dating a white woman in the first place. He would also have to castigate his own sister should she dump a black man in favor of a white one.

Otherwise he is forming a worthless sophist argument and telling a highly inauthentic lie that he was offended by Barack's racism. Can a racist be genuinely offended by one's racism?

This, Martin, is what is known as a sophist argument. One castigates Obama for saying that his white grandmother was afraid of blacks, whereas if you the person making the argument had heard that his grandmother was taking the bus to Compton, he would say "are you crazy, you're supposed to be afraid of blacks!"

Obama told a stoy about his mother being afraid of a black man, and this is used against him by people who's general argument is that whites should have inherent fear of blacks.

It is a little like what happened on an earlier post, in which a poster tried to use Obama dumping a white girl in favor of a black one against him.

He made the argument as though this is a moralistic failure on the part of Obama. In order for this to be logical, the writer would have to believe that all people and all relationships are equal, he would also have to have no resentment toward a black man who was dating a white woman in the first place. He would also have to castigate his own sister should she dump a black man in favor of a white one.

Otherwise he is forming a worthless sophist argument and telling a highly inauthentic lie that he was offended by Barack's racism. Can a racist be genuinely offended by one's racism?

What a bunch nonsense. Obama and his lazy white grandfather are dishonorable men for not coming to the defense of the most important woman in their lives.

Obama's never shown much respect for feminism. His appreciation of his grandmother, a pioneering woman banking executive in Hawaii is rather faint.

Obama is feminine himself with his passive agressive way of undermining those he runs gainst. Like Jack Ryan (Senate RCae) whose divorce records he got unsealed

Blame his narcissism for not appreciating what Michelle and his grandmother have done for him. The dude's world revolves around himself and the mythic life he invented for himself. There is only room for one star in that show

Congratulations, "Truth", you didn't blow off that challenge. Yes, I will concede to you, those are names,....probably of doctors. Big Deal. That still doesn't prove your contention.

"All, what you would consider geniuses, and all 'melanin challenged' except one."

No, no I would not consider them geniuses. On what basis would I conclude that? Because they have blogs? Do any of them have Nobel prizes? You have pretty low standards for genius.

As long as you're naming putative experts, how about Peter Duesberg? He's a distinguished molecular biologist - a professor at UC Berkeley. And he doesn't think there is any such thing as an HIV epidemic at all. He makes a convincing case of it too. I don't happen to believe him, but, as experts go, he outranks yours......

"There have been over 100 well regarded American and Western European biologists/epidemiologists die under mysterious circumstances in the past 8 years."

To a conspiracy fantasist, such as yourself, all deaths are "mysterious".

"He who does not know the past is condemned to repeat it. -George Santayana"

This is a quote that people with faux erudition often trot out to prove how smart they are. It's certainly a nice quote, and there is even some truth to it. However, here it is quite irrelevant.

" Truth said..."And, perhaps, not without reason."This, Martin, is what is known as a sophist argument."

No, it isn't. The fears of Obama's grandmother were not irrational in the least. It's not irrational for a woman to be frightened of an aggressive, hostile bum on a bus.

"It's not irrational for a woman to be frightened of an aggressive, hostile bum on a bus."

No it isn't Martin, and that is my entire point. It isn't irrational, nor is it 'irrational' or 'racist' for Obama to bring it up. And it was your challenge, I think that with all of the work that I did, the least that you could do would be to read the links.

As far as these people not being geniuses, most Doctors (ok Martin, most white Doctors) who graduated medical school and passed the bar have IQ over 135 don't they? This, technically makes one a genius doesn't it?

No it isn't Martin, and that is my entire point. It isn't irrational, nor is it 'irrational' or 'racist' for Obama to bring it up."

Then I don't know what your point is. I don't claim it was irrational or racist for Obama to bring it up. It was opportunistic, and indicative of a callous disregard for his own grandmother, to claim that she was a "typical white person", presumably displaying typical white racism for being afraid of a hostile bum.

"And it was your challenge, I think that with all of the work that I did, the least that you could do would be to read the links."

Hey, tough beans. No guarantees. And anyway, I did look at the links you provided. What do you want? Outlines? Venn diagrams?

"As far as these people not being geniuses, most Doctors (ok Martin, most white Doctors) who graduated medical school and passed the bar have IQ over 135 don't they? This, technically makes one a genius doesn't it?""

White or black has nothing to do with it. Technically, you may be right that an IQ of 135 is classed as "genius". If so, it's a cheapening of the word. When I think of "genius" doctors, I think more along the lines of Paul Erlich or Robert Koch, not just some doc with a blog.

Here's the Google Wallet FAQ. From it: "You will need to have (or sign up for) Google Wallet to send or receive money. If you have ever purchased anything on Google Play, then you most likely already have a Google Wallet. If you do not yet have a Google Wallet, don’t worry, the process is simple: go to wallet.google.com and follow the steps." You probably already have a Google ID and password, which Google Wallet uses, so signing up Wallet is pretty painless.

You can put money into your Google Wallet Balance from your bank account and send it with no service fee.

Google Wallet works from both a website and a smartphone app (Android and iPhone -- the Google Wallet app is currently available only in the U.S., but the Google Wallet website can be used in 160 countries).

Or, once you sign up with Google Wallet, you can simply send money via credit card, bank transfer, or Wallet Balance as an attachment from Google's free Gmail email service. Here'show to do it.

(Non-tax deductible.)

Fourth: if you have a Wells Fargo bank account, you can transfer money to me (with no fees) via Wells Fargo SurePay. Just tell WF SurePay to send the money to my ancient AOL email address steveslrATaol.com -- replace the AT with the usual @). (Non-tax deductible.)

Fifth: if you have a Chase bank account (or, theoretically,other bank accounts), you can transfer money to me (with no fees) via Chase QuickPay (FAQ). Just tell Chase QuickPay to send the money to my ancient AOL email address (steveslrATaol.com -- replace the AT with the usual @). If Chase asks for the name on my account, it's Steven Sailer with an n at the end of Steven. (Non-tax deductible.)

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